Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 5 December 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good evening and happy Tuesday from Air2Ground Farms! It was a cool, windy, sunny day today. The temps will dip into the 20s tonight but it’s looking mild and sunny for the rest of the week. The BIG news on the farm is that we received Happy’s Johne’s Disease test results and she is negative! We are so very happy to get that news! The top pic is Happy this evening enjoying the negative results. We will continue to test her every year for the next few years just to make sure everything is still good, but we can move forward without making any hard decisions right now. Since Stella is so young, even if she has the disease, it is dormant and will remain so for another year. We will keep her with Happy until she can be tested. Next year, if she tests positive, we will have her processed before she becomes symptomatic and starts to lose condition. If she tests negative, we will breed her and she will become one of our milk cows. The vet commended us on the cleanliness of the area and said it was the only reason that we could have one cow test positive and another one, after being together for the past 18 months, test negative is that they are in a clean environment. The next biggest news is that we processed the beef chickens yesterday. My parents came over to help and we processed 69 birds in 5 hours yesterday. Today, we parted and froze about half of them and bagged whole and froze the rest in about 3 hours. 8 hours of work to go from catching the first bird to all birds in the freezer is a new record for us. One major change we made was to catch all of the birds at the beginning and move them all into a small cage near the processing station. Previously, we would do that in small batches and would have to pause throughout the day to go catch and transport more birds. Next time, we will move the cage closer to the kill cones to reduce the time spent walking from one place to the other. The middle pic is the birds in the holding cage. The bottom pic is a part of our processing system. The kill cones are attached to pallets, which are attached to T-posts. We wrapped the scalder in foam to insulate it and that really helped bring up and hold the temperature. The plucker is on the right side of the photo. Not in the photo are multiple coolers with ice, a 10’ long stainless steel topped table, and a couple of ice cream display freezers that we use to chill and hold the birds for 24 hours prior to freezing. The other animals on the farm are doing really well.
A new study was published on 16 November 2023 that I would like to bring to your attention. The title is “Ketone bodies mediate alterations in brain energy metabolism and biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease.” I’ll quickly take you through the highlights of the study. Over 50 million people worldwide suffer from dementia with 70% of those having Alzheimer’s. Historically, the cause of Alzheimer’s has been predominantly agreed upon as plaques in the brain. This study questions that assertion and offers a different hypothesis and also offers potential TREATMENT recommendations and even preventative measures. Other than a few cases that have genetic causes, why is the plaque building up in the brain? It would seem that one of the glucose transporters that transports energy from the blood into the brain is particularly sensitive to insulin. In cases where there is an overabundance of insulin, like insulin resistance, the transporter binds to the insulin and eventually forms plaques. Over time, that process ends up making the brain reach the point that it can no longer use glucose as energy, its primary energy source. As the brain starts to lose energy, its function begins to decline. The progression continues until there is no energy for the brain to function. That said, there is another form of energy that the brain can utilize, but it doesn’t exist in the Standard American Diet. Up to 60% of the brain’s energy can come from ketones but the body must be in a state of ketosis to produce those ketones. Since the Standard American Diet is probably the farthest thing from ketosis you can get, there is no way to produce enough ketones to fuel the brain with this alternative source. This is especially true in hospitals and care facilities, where there is no chance of ketosis with their food offerings. If, however, the body does enter a state of ketosis and starts producing ketones, there is marked improvement in cognitive ability in patients with Alzheimer’s since their brain begins receiving fuel again. That improvement lasts as long as they are producing ketones. No ketones, no brain fuel…since the glucose transport mechanism has been so damaged by the excess levels of insulin. I’ll ask you to hop onto the logic train and take a ride with me. The Standard American Diet, due to extremely high carbohydrate consumption (once ingested, the body sees all carbs as glucose, whether it’s table sugar or wheat bread), causes such high levels of insulin that people are becoming insulin resistant. Evidence for this is the extraordinarily high number of people with metabolic disorders to include type 2 diabetes. This study shows, that same insulin resistance is also leading to cognitive decline and death due to dementia and Alzheimer’s. Ketones can overcome the lack of glucose fuel, and dementia patients show improvement. THUS—instead of eating the Standard American Diet that is VERY effectively making people VERY SICK, why not eat a ketogenic diet that will prevent the issues from happening in the first place?
Check out our latest podcast, 3 Easy Steps to Start KETO where we take 14 minutes to give an easy to follow list of steps to take to get started on a ketogenic lifestyle.
Local Farm Report for 1-4 December 2023
Harvest:
47 Chicken eggs
15 Duck eggs
9 Gallons of milk
69 Beef chickens in the freezer!
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
So thankful the girls are negative!
Way to go dudes and dudettes! Good write up on Alzheimers and yes, our diets have sucked for years! Takes a load off when you finally realize what Bill Gates and his ilk have been up to for years...they used food as a weapon...but the masses are awakening! Especially ranchers and farmers...we are so blessed.
Great info